Cooking and writing make Judy a dull girl

 

Our quiche
with the obviously store-bought crust
Sorry about that.

Well, not really—at least I hope not. But it seems this week that’s all I’ve been doing —cooking and writing. And it doesn’t make for scintillating blogs. But as I look back at midweek, I realize it’s been a pretty interesting week. And cooking has been a large part of it.

Monday I had company for happy hour (my crowded happy hour schedule this week is a whole other topic, a good one), and Christian was cooking—so it was late before we ate supper. But we had chicken roll-ups with cheese and pesto. So good. Tuesday night I experimented and made a quiche—bacon and cheddar. Yummy, and it made a great breakfast this morning.

For about a week I’ve had a whole chicken in the freezer but cooking it in the oven means spatchcocking it (fits in my toaster oven much better), which in turn means defrosting it far enough in advance to be able to do that. So we finally got our act together, and yesterday I defrosted the chicken. Except that I forgot until about noon and was afraid it would not be defrosted in time for Christian to spatchcock it this morning. It was defrosted, but Christian didn’t get my message until mid-day today by which time I had struggled through and done it myself. Except it didn’t look like the ones he has fixed for me. I panicked and thought maybe I’d cut through the wrong side of the chicken, but I kept telling myself that wasn’t possible. I turned that silly chicken every which way before I cut.

Tonight I found out the problem—I only cut on one side of the backbone—believe me that was enough hard work. But you’re supposed to cut on both sides and lift the backbone out. My chicken had a definite tilt to it, and the kids said it looked like a drunken chicken. But I used a Greek recipe—olive oil, lemon, and lots of oregano—and it was delicious, with lots of good, crisp skin. With leftovers for salad tomorrow.

My tipsy Greek chicken.
Oh, those onions were so good!

My efficiency discovery for the day: Jordan’s work has been so busy—lots of people traveling these days--that she is hard put to get to the grocery store. She said she’d go to Albertson’s tomorrow, and I could order from Central Market for pick-up. Well, I fooled her. There were a lot of non-grocery items on my Albertson’s list—mouthwash, eye drops, Tylenol and the like. I ordered them all from Amazon. I told Christian tonight I regretted all the packaging, but the convenience was worth it. He said since we recycle religiously, the packing was okay. So now my grocery order for the week is set—and I’ve already thought of something I didn’t list. Oh me!

I have truly been writing, but with Finding Florence debuting next month, I’ve been mostly writing marketing stuff, like a newsletter. If you’d like to subscribe to my newsletter, please send an email to j.alter@tcu.edu. I call it my only occasional newsletter, but it usually ends up being quarterly, more or less. I announce new publications, rehash what I’m working on, offer a recipe I like and some tips about what I’ve been reading. And this time I’ll give away three copies of Saving Irene, the first Irene in Chicago Culinary Mystery, for those who haven’t met Irene and her storyteller, Henny. I’m also writing blogs, posting on Facebook, and trying to get the word out. A high-powered marketing person I am not.

My new word for the day: clairaudience. You know clairvoyance, the ability to see things in the future? Well, clairaudience folks hear voices that the rest of us don’t. And it turns out there’s a word for extrasensory perception dealing with each of our senses: clairsentience is for feeling; claircognizance for knowing; and clairgustience for smelling what others cannot. The latter could be helpful in many situations. A writer’s online group I belong to had an informative post today from a certified psychic. She urged us to avoid stereotypical thinking about psychics: admittedly there are many fakes in the business, but there are also genuine psychics. Often, they have taken courses and been certified. No, psychics cannot predict the future and it would be unethical for them to do that, particularly predicting the time and manner of  your death; psychics do not live in dark rooms in Victorian mansions, have twenty cats and a crystal ball; psychics do not know what everyone in a room is thinking at every moment; and not all psychics receive the same signals, as indicated by the new words I heard today. Some receive visual signals, some hear voices, etc.

All this was particularly interesting to me because Irene, in Finding Florence, has suddenly given greater credibility to the voices she’s always heard. And Henny has no idea what to believe.

It was a good day. I cooked a good chicken, soothed out a bit of household stress, even caught a glass in mid-air as it was about to crash on the tile counter. Life is good. Hope it is for you too.